A/N: Thanks for continuing to read this it is going to be a long work, so Samcedes will be light until the end, but when they interact, you will have to guess why they act crazy around each other. Please forgive all my mistakes, and no I don't own any of this.

Five

Multiple complaints of a short man covered in green paint running down Main Street in his green underwear
throwing Lucky Charms cereal at tourists. Suspect is not believed to actually be a leprechaun or even Irish.

—LIMA CITY POLICE BLOTTER

"My daughter is missing. He kidnapped my daughter!"

A redheaded middle aged woman almost fell out of the Mercedes that had almost run the human, Mercedes down just as a trio of deputies swarmed around their new boss.

Looking up from the floor, Cedes watched from beside the car as the woman fell to her knees in slow motion. The world had slowed, and she felt like she had that time she'd got to go to space camp when she was in her astronaut phase. One day after experiencing low gravity and puking out her guts for hours later, she was calling her parents to take her home. This experience quickly disenchanted her desire to go to school to be an astronaut, to be on a space shuttle, or even to go to space: The final frontier. Or was it?

Deputy McCarthy, ever the gentleman, helped the woman up, but the out of control driver had cut her hands on the shattered glass when she'd fallen. Seeing the blood woke Cedes out of her reverie. She still felt upside down and inside out, but she remembered she was the sheriff and she had to take control of this bizarre situation.

This would be hard to do because she heard the screeching of an alarm around them. A deputy was screaming for Dani to get an ambulance there ASAP. Hunter came over to her, his face upside down as he spoke, but she couldn't focus on his words just yet. Everything was a blur. Did she have a concussion?

When she finally tried to get up, Hunter held her to the ground with a hand on her shoulder. She looked from side to side, trying to orient herself. That was when she saw the tire, which sat about three inches from her face. She came close to being hit. So close, she could smell the rubber. And the engine of the luxury vehicle was still running.

Adrenaline shot through her, and she tried to scramble away from the wheel, worried the car would inch forward and finish its obvious attempt of mowing her down. Making her the first sheriff of Lima Springs County whose term began and ended on the same date.

Hunter noticed her noticing the car and as though she weighed next to nothing, he picked her up, heedless of the glass, and moved her away from the glass and then immediately put her back down on the floor.

"You have to take it easy, boss," he said, his familiar voice calming her down. "Let's make sure nothing is broken, okay?"

"I'm okay, the car didn't hit me." she said. If she could stop the world from spinning. She would be fine. Maybe she hit her head when she fell to the floor which would explain the possible concussion.

She looked around for the redheaded woman again and found her sitting on a chair in the lobby, yelling at sweet Deputy McCarthy as Deputy Abrams jumped in the car and turned off the engine.

"The ambulance is on the way," Hunter said, and Cedes' annoyance with him overruled her appreciation of his concern for her well being.

"I'm okay, Hunt, really. Can someone just please turn off that alarm?" She tried to get back up again and McCarthy quickly came to her side and helped her up despite a warning glare from Hunter.

He steadied her when she swayed, but Hunter took over, wrapping an arm around her for support as she limped toward the driver of the Mercedes. The alarm finally stopped blaring.

"Ma'am, do you need an ambulance?" she asked the hysterical woman.

The woman's eyes rounded when she saw her. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to hit you. . ." She looked at the damage she'd caused and put a hand over her mouth. "Oh, my God. Are you going to arrest me?" Artie Abrams, the dark haired tech geek, tried his best to calm her down.

"No, ma'am. We just need for you to listen to Deputy Abrams. Thank you, Deputy," Cedes said knowing she needed to slow down her thought processes. She was grateful for Abrams using common sense in this situation. He had only been with the Lima Springs office about eight months, and he was the only deputy besides Hathaway that was not originally from the area. But he came with stellar recommendations, and according to all reports, he adjusted quickly.

Abrams nodded and took a step back to give the woman room.

With Hunter's help, Cedes knelt in front of the woman. "Ma'am, can you tell me exactly what happened?"

The woman seemed to slip into a state of shock. Her expression went blank even as tears slid past her lashes. "He took her. He took my daughter." She blinked and focused on Cedes, folding her hands into her own. "You have to find my baby."

Cedes' heart squeezed. "What's your name?"

"Debbie. Deborah Caswell."

Ah yes. The Caswells were new to Lima Springs as well. They'd been the talk of the town last summer when they moved to Lima Springs from Utah to start a winery. And they had money. The root of all evil and many child abductions.

Cedes gestured for McCarthy to grab a pen and pad. A pad that Cedes smudged with blood. Her hands were covered in several tiny cuts. She wiped one on her pants, winced at the glass shards still stuck inside of her skin, and continued taking the woman's statement.

"Okay, who was the man who took your daughter? Did you see him?"

"No. He took her last night while I was sleeping. I fell asleep."

Someone brought Cedes a chair, and she sat in front of Mrs. Caswell. The splinters of glass digging into her skin stung every time she moved, but she could see to that later. The siren from an ambulance wailed as it neared, which seemed ridiculous to her since the fire station was only a couple of blocks away.

"Mrs. Caswell, how old is your baby?"

"She's fourteen."

Same age as Gina. For some reason, that knowledge made the situation hit home to her.

Mrs. Caswell spoke between sobs, her voice strained. "She'll be fifteen in a few days. Three days exactly." Her eyes rounded again, and she pawed at Cedes' hands like a cat. "You have to find my baby girl. We don't have much time."

Before Cedes could ask what she meant, the woman disintegrated into a fit of sobs, her shoulders shaking violently. Cedes sent one of the deputies for water as the EMTs rushed in. She gave them the hand signal to have them stop walking, and she continued her interrogation of the distraught woman.

She put a hand on the woman's shoulder to get her attention and to stop her pawing. "Mrs. Caswell, I am going to need you to start from the beginning. How long has your daughter been missing?"

The woman blinked, as if she was trying to wake up from a nightmare, and said in a very quiet voice, "She's been gone forever." Cedes knew then that questioning the woman any more would be a waste of time at this point. She was clearly in shock.

Cedes called Hunter and one of the EMTs to her office while the other tech examined Mrs. Caswell. She glanced at the station's new appearance, so different from how it looked this morning. A red Mercedes sedan that probably cost more than the entire Lima Springs Sheriff's office now graced its foyer. They could do worse, she figured. It could have been an ugly Tesla cybertruck.

She thought back, trying to remember exactly what hit where when the car came at her so quickly that she fell in her attempt to avoid it and ended up sprawled on her back, a fact that probably saved her life if the placement of the tire was any indication. Three inches closer and she'd be in dire need of a face-lift. As in her face lifted off the floor.

Her phone buzzed and she lifted up to see that it was a text from Gina. Her fourteen year old, she'd just left at school not an hour earlier. She prayed her daughter hadn't actually cut anyone this early in the semester. As she continued to read the message, she was able to breathe a sigh of relief. It was only their standard check-in text.

"Knock-knock," she'd texted.

Cedes smiled. "Who's there?"

"You."

A bubble of laughter surfaced. "Sweetheart, I know you're lying. You know I never take the time to bother to knock."

She received a GIF of a hyena on its back in a fit of laughter for her efforts. A breathy sigh of relief slid past her lips. She'd genuinely been worried about her daughter's emotional, physical, and mental health this last week.

The trials and tribulations of being a single parent, she supposed.

She sent several red hearts before restarting what felt like the longest journey to her office.

With no time to spare, she began unbuttoning her shirt before she made it there, but something else drew her attention. She looked across the street to see Sam looking at her from the gas station.

She forgot what she was doing and looked right back at him because she wanted an even better look of him, but it was the expression on his face that stopped her in her tracks.

When his green-eyed gaze met hers, he lowered his head and stared at her for a solid minute, his fists tightening around a worn ball cap that he had taken off to get a better view of her.

She could see what was that? Actually, concern on his face. And something akin to knowing all hell was about to break loose, as though the crash didn't surprise him at all. As though her presence in the sheriff's office didn't surprise him either. Then again, why would her presence shock him? He'd had to have known she'd won the election and was now the sheriff of Lima Springs County.

He licked his full lips, the movement so sexy Cedes almost sank to her knees because it was just so hot. Before she could melt or take her eyes off of him, he turned around, climbed back into his truck, and took off, heading north toward his family's land.

"As expected," Hunter said from beside her. "Nothing has changed at all." His tone was teasing, and Cedes wanted to punch him in the arm like she had on numerous occasions in high school. "Do you think maybe we ought to find a missing kid now?"

Cedes straightened her shoulders and winced as the fabric of her uniform scraped over the glass in her back. Death by a thousand paper cuts suddenly seemed much worse than she'd previously imagined.

"As soon as we get all this glass out of you, that is," Hunter added.

They started toward her office again, the EMT right behind them, when Dani stepped out of the restroom, her hands pressed against her abdomen.

"Ms. Sonato, are you okay?"

"Please, Sheriff, call me Dani, and I'm sorry about this." She gestured toward the bathroom. "I have stomach issues. Every time I get upset or excited or nervous, I have to, you know, find a restroom."

"That's . . . unfortunate," she said, surprised the woman worked at a sheriff's station where she could experience those emotions daily. "And you can call me Cedes. Or Mercy. Or Mercedes." She rolled her eyes. She really needed to choose one and stick to it. "I need you to get all the info you can on Mrs. Caswell. Her daughter is missing."

"Again?" Dani asked. Shaking her head, she started for her desk, but Cedes stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

"What do you mean again? Has she gone missing before?"

Dani closed her mouth as though she'd said something she shouldn't have. "Nope, not going there. Please forget I mentioned it." She started to go toward her desk again. "Please let the EMT check you out."

When Cedes' questioning expression at the deputy beside her resulted only in a shrug from Hunter indicating that he didn't know what Dani was talking about, Cedes retraced her steps to where Mrs. Caswell was sitting in an ambulance. An EMT was checking her vitals while she cradled a cup of coffee.

Cedes stood outside the ambulance at the door. "Mrs. Caswell, has your daughter ever run away before today?"

"What? No. She has never run away from home. One time, she was just scared and took off for a little while. But that doesn't matter now. We don't have much time to find her before she is gone forever."

A terrified parent was one thing, but Deborah Caswell seemed awfully sure of her daughter's potential fate of death if she not was found soon. Cedes' suspicious mind began to work overtime. Maybe that little statement about forever meant something, after all.

"Why?" she asked, her voice taking on a harder edge. "Why don't we have much time?"

Mrs. Caswell blinked in surprise, then stumbled through an explanation. "Well, isn't that what all the cop shows say? That the first forty-eight hours are the most critical?"

She had her there. But still. "You said it was a he earlier."

"What?" The woman was shaking so badly that hot coffee sloshed over the side of her cup. She gasped and almost dropped it.

"You said, 'He took her.' Who is this he?"

"No one." She handed the cup to Jay and brought her scalded hand to her mouth. "I don't know. It was just a guess. Isn't it usually a male who kidnaps girls?" Then she turned, her sense of entitlement taking over. "I don't see what any of that has to do with my missing daughter, Sheriff Porter. Are you going to do your job or not?"

Mrs. Caswell's words were just as much a defense mechanism as entitlement, so Cedes didn't take them too personally. She let the events of the day turn over in her mind before standing and heading back to her office. The deputies already had the car down the stairs and now it was completely out of the station as a tow truck waited nearby.

"What are you thinking?" Hunter asked.

"I'm thinking Mrs. Caswell isn't telling us the entire truth."

"What gave that away?" he asked, his tone dripping with sarcasm.

"But right now, there's a fourteen-year-old girl out there somewhere, and we need to find her as quickly as possible."

"Agreed. Are you sure you're up for this? What with it being your first day and all?"

"Up for it? This is why I became a law enforcement officer."

"To save abducted girls?" he asked.

She eyed him for a long moment, then said, "To catch criminals period."

After an excruciating session in which the EMT begged Cedes repeatedly to go the urgent care facility, claiming a couple of her cuts needed stitches, he dressed them the best he could and used skin glue so Cedes could put on a clean shirt so she and Hunter could drive Mrs. Caswell to her house to investigate the possible abduction site.

She put the other deputies on various tasks like calling the school to see if the girl showed up there and getting her phone records, with her mother's blessing.

Mrs. Caswell questioned Cedes the entire way to her house. "Why aren't you calling in the CBI or the CIA or whatever other organization needs to be notified? Shouldn't you be calling for backup?"

At that moment, Cedes just wanted to keep the woman calm. "We need to inspect the site before we call anyone in."

"But we don't have much time." The woman was in a state of near panic, but Cedes knew one thing Mrs. Caswell didn't. They don't always kill them in the first forty-eight hours. Sometimes they hold abducted teenagers for days.

The Caswell's home was not what she'd expected. They owned a large vineyard, and their house—scratch that—their mansion was proof that the vineyard was successful. They pulled up to a stunning stone-and-glass three-story contemporary dwelling with even a stone entrance.

Mrs. Caswell hurried them upstairs to her daughter's room, where neither a Beauty and the Beast figurine nor a Percy Jackson and the Olympians book was out of place.

"This is it. Ashlyn's room."

Cedes studied a couple of photos and computer printouts that haphazardly lined the mirror of an otherwise pristine bedroom. Ashlyn Caswell was adorable. She had red long hair that she wore in braids in some pictures. Some pictures it was wavy, and some it was straight. A smattering of freckles peppered her nose, on top of which sat a pair of round glasses that screamed book geek.

Cedes liked her instantly.

But the room hadn't been disturbed in the least. If this was a teen's room, Cedes wanted one: a teen that kept her room this clean. Gina's room looked like an earthquake shook it on a weekly basis.

"Mrs. Caswell—"

"Debbie, please."

"Debbie," she began again, only to be interrupted a second time.

"See?" Debbie said, gesturing wildly. The longer she spoke, the louder her voice became. "Her backpack is still here. Her bed hasn't been slept in. The clothes she'd set out for school today haven't been touched, and her phone is still on the charger. She's been missing all night." With Hunter's help, she sank onto a chair by Ashlyn's desk and whispered, "She's out there all alone." Fresh tears ran down her cheeks as Cedes and Hunter took in the scene.

Hunter checked the window for signs of forced entry, just as he had when they'd come in the front door. Nothing. Cedes looked through a smattering of papers on the desk and nightstand, but nothing looked unusual there, either.

"Debbie, are you sure Ashlyn didn't leave on her own free will?"

"I'm more than sure!" Debbie jumped up, wringing her hands. "She wouldn't do that. She had no reason to. You have to believe me."

"Then why does my office think she did?"

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and said quietly, "Because Ashlyn left the house a few days ago without telling me, and I overreacted."

Debbie's behavior once again bordered on the suspicious. Either she took monitoring her daughter's whereabouts to a whole new level, or she wasn't telling them everything.

"Did she take her cell phone with her at that time?"

"Yes!" She jumped up and rushed to Ashlyn's phone.

Hunter stopped her from touching it with a gentle hand on her arm.

She nodded in understanding. "Yes, she did. Her battery had died, and I couldn't get a hold of her, so I dialed 911 in a panic."

And the phone call was transferred from the city police to Dani at the sheriff's office.

"But is different this time, she left her phone here. Nothing on earth could separate that girl from her phone barring a natural disaster or an abduction."

Cedes had to agree with her on the point. "I'm going to send a team in to search this room completely, Debbie. I'll need you to stay out of it until they get here, okay? It's important that you don't touch anything."

She clutched her chest and nodded.

"Where is your husband?"

"In Napa Valley on business. I told him not to go. He's on his way back."

"Why?"

"Because our daughter is missing!" she screamed.

"No, why did you tell him not to go before he left?"

"Oh. Well, Ashlyn's birthday is coming up."

"Of course." Cedes looked over the room one last time. "Remember, it is important that you don't touch anything."

"I won't. I promise I'll wait right here."

They left the house through a back door to get a look at that point of entry. Again, no sign of forced entry.

"What do you think?" Cedes asked Hunter when they got back into her cruiser.

"If something smells fishy, it's usually tuna," he said.

"Exactly because why would it be salmon."

Before she left the Caswell's house, Cedes took out her phone and knock-knocked Gina. This case made Cedes more grateful than ever that her daughter was at school safe and sound. A few seconds later, she received a thumbs-up.

At least Gina's day was going better than hers.

With about five minutes of class left, Gina watched as her classmate got up and sat with their partners, so they could make plans on when to meet to do their interviews. Some cheated and agreed to simply fill out the forms themselves instead of doing an interview and then trading papers before class. Gina hoped her partner wouldn't suggest they take that route.

Since he'd made no move to sit next to her, she was left with little choice but to go to him. He may not have cared about his grades, but she cared greatly about hers, and she was not about to let him risk her required A average.

She took the seat directly in front of him. He watched her. When he made no effort to break the ice with conversation, she took the initiative.

She let her gaze drop, unable to look at him—his gaze was so intense—and got on with it. "Okay, I completely understand that you don't like me. Not liking me is obviously a club at this school. But we have a group project, and I am not going to make a zero, so—"

Before she got another word out, he slid the paper out of her hand, turned it over, and wrote on the back. When he finished, he handed it to her and waited on her.

She read the phone number. "Is this your phone number?"

He nodded, then asked, "Why do you think that I don't like you?" The tone of his voice was smooth and rich like a singer, and it did the same things to her it had done before when he was reading the poem in their first class.

"Because apparently, I called the deputy sheriffs to come out to the lake."

His eyes narrowed as though he was trying to figure her out.

"That's what everyone here thinks and is saying, anyway."

He handed her his paper. She turned it over and wrote her number on the back, her hand started to shake while she was writing.

"Do I make you nervous or something?" he asked.

She gave him her best what the hell face that she had inherited from her mother who had inherited it from her mother and so on.

For the first time, he let a true smile slide across his face. The effect was nothing short of wonderful.

She closed and reopened her eyes and went back to writing. Or she would have if she hadn't completely forgotten her new address. Panic surged inside her. As did her grasp on reality, apparently.

"Why are you shaking?"

This was getting ridiculous. She lived on Mercury Drive. She knew that much. "Oh, you know. That's what happens when the whole school is out to get even with the snitch."

"Ah."

She gave up and handed the paper back to him. "How about I just come to you?"

"You live behind your grandparents' house, right?"

How did he know that? "Yes."

He handed the paper back. "One thirteen."

"What?"

One corner of his mouth tilted. "Your new address. It's 113 Mercury Drive." When she gaped at him, he raised a hand in surrender. "I helped build your home. You were all your grandparents talked about while I was there."

She felt heat travel from her face down to her heart as she wrote down her address that he knew better than she did.

"Do you have any afternoons free this week?" she asked. When he didn't answer, she looked up at him.

After an awkward moment of silence, he told her, "Sure, do, all of them."

The way he said it caused a tingling sensation in her stomach where the heat from earlier now resided.

"Hi!" Gina looked up and saw the only other friendly face from today standing beside them.

"I'm Kourtney. We met this summer, but you probably don't remember it. You are meeting a lot of people and have a lot of names to memorize while we are only meeting you and have to remember the one name."

Ricky hadn't bothered giving Kourtney any of his attention. It was all focused on Gina, and she was trying to figure out why he was staring at her and not the pretty curvy girl in front of them. Was this a joke? Was she being punked?. Why was he being so nice now?

"I remember," was all Gina could get out before Kourtney started talking again. Thankfully, the bell rang so the girl could catch her breath.

When Ricky stood, he blocked Kourtney's view of her, effectively shutting up the poor girl. This boy obviously had not mastered basic social skills.

Gina stood up and slid her backpack over her shoulders, a bit grateful for his intervention. Kourtney would take some getting used to.

Ricky took her schedule, scanned it, then walked with her to the hall where she saw her newest frenemies.

No, that wasn't true. In order for Lily and her group to be called frenemies, they would have to have been nice to her at some point. So not what was going on here today.

If the stank faces from Lily and her group had been bad before, she'd just earned their eternal wrath. Their expressions, especially Lily's, when they saw her walking with Ricky were at first shock and then cold, calculating rage.

Maybe Lily had a thing for Ricky, but she had a boy by her side everywhere she went. Bastian Blythe. The rich jock who spent his summers in Paris and, according to rumor, had a Porsche waiting for him when he turned sixteen next Lily and Bastian were just friends. Either way, Gina had a feeling things were going to get much worse before they got better.